Psychopomp

“No rest is sweeter than that which chases exertion. Know the polar ends of life. Know exhaustion to understand reprieve. Know suffering to understand peace. Know weakness to understand strength. Upon the fringes true life resides, where one can see the edges which give it form. Away from the amorphous middle, all should stay.”

Excerpt, Of Soma and Psyche

Teachings of the Ichorians

The descent to the Kore Chambers is a pensive one. Ewain’s dock being so high within the Harbor makes it even more so. As the lift cranks lower, he leans forward on the freezing metal rail and studies the mural of shaved stone ahead. Six towering pillars made in mimicry of Morrius’ armor-clad sons spine the far wall and between each are the murals. He knew every curve, cut, and shade of the pieces now…he knew them five years ago when his mentor brought him in here and refused to let him leave until Ewain answered his every question.

Who is that? The irritable old man would ask.

And Ewain would answer promptly. Edelhard Martel. Reynar Welf. Phillip Oviedo. On and on. Who were they? Who did they love? What were the values of their time? Why do we remember them? Every question was a hydra, answering one only spawned more until finally the entire body of the person in question was known.

Legacy, his mentor called it. Legacy, Ewain. It was the first time the old man addressed him by name. Everything in this world is the legacy of the past, and to escape the rhyme of history we must know its every song. He recalls the man’s words each time he looks at the wall, and in its many portraits are endless songs.

When the lift finally stops, it brings him to a dimly lit subterranean chamber. Chandeliers of a dozen candles hang from the arched ceiling and straight ahead is an immaculate opulent marbled wall. Two titans of mahogany timber wrought with iron closes its gateway and bands of shimmering horn frame it. Upon each side is a fountain molded in the shape of feminine hands, gifting pure water forth into a basin beneath.

As soon as Ewain’s feet leave the lift, the doors patiently open inward with deceptive discretion. Unburdening dark reveals itself and brings into sight a rippling reflecting pool that bisects the next chamber. Grass soft and white as pure silk bend at the water’s edge and spread throughout the chamber, leaving not a spot without its enchanting dominion. Water sermonizes in a steady splash from a rocky pulpit covered in incandescent blooms. The wooing melody beckons.

Maidens adorned in flowing mantles the shade of demure cantaloupe move gracefully about. Their entire bodies save their delicate forearms hide beneath the undulating cotton folds. They lithely pluck petals of vibrant shadow lilies and nova roses and place them upon the water to turn each ripple into a luminary wave. Their fingers comb through the ghost grass, pulling any dark and sickly sprouts they find.

As if the air made his presence known, all look at Ewain when he enters the chamber. Dozens of hypnotizing eyes evaluate him before all but one pair of sapphire irises return to focus on their duties. When she sees him, her gaze does not curtly cut away but seeks his lustrous eyes. When they do, the corners of her pink lips curl into her fine alabaster cheeks ever-so-slightly. She remains in place, however, placing the petals still in her elegant fingers into the water with the same reverence and patience as before their ocular connection.

Once her hands empty, she rises and closes with him. Her back and neck are flawlessly straight, fingers interlock with opposing palms by her navel, and face is perfectly perpendicular to the ground. With bare feet she moves not too slow, not too quick.

A foot of space stays her from him, her elating nectarine perfume wafts into his nose and sparkling eyes born from the heart of the sea not once part from his own.

“Psychopompos,” the word strums from her sumptuous lips like plucks of a harp, “a pleasure to see you as always. You certainly kept me waiting. Come, please,” she turns her side to him, “let us delay no further.”

Before he can gather breath for reply, the fair maiden walks ahead, guiding them through the ghost grass toward one of the many opaque glass doors in the gray chamber walls. No two were similar in complexion, one bears the color of Tuscan hills in summer, another of wayward winter, one the flax of fall, and another the birth of spring.

It is her hair, however, that wins Ewain’s gaze as he follows. Rich strands bright as bullion wrapped into many braided bands and put together into one elegant bun while wispy, wavy bangs tuck behind her ears. Only when they reach a door, one temperate and of warmth subdued, do his eyes stray from their admiration.

Back still straight, one hand flat on her navel while the other guides to the door, she bows slightly, “Please.”

Ewain pushes the door open but does not enter, “Please,” he motions with his bloodstained, calloused hand.

Those blushed cheeks bunch so slight, and she steps inside, Ewain behind her.

A prosperous cherry blossom tree stands host ahead, a tall, flawless pink body and branches adorned with a wealth of strawberry-colored flowers. One by one those heavenly petals descend in pirouettes to two steaming hot springs below. Side-by-side with a thin aisle of green grass between them, the surfaces of the semi-spherical pools ripple with each new petal. Steps of the smoothest stone lead into each spring with candles all around to obediently hold humble, flickering embers. Grassy emerald isles envelop this all, ending at the shadow walls that ascend high above into a planetary dome that glitters and twinkles as the night sky itself.

“Just like the springs Jadovan was said to bathe in after one of his many long journeys,” the maiden turns to him, iridescent in this light, “When your covenant partner sent word you were finally returning, I thought this appropriate for your restoration chamber.”

“It must have required much effort on your part,” Ewain answers as he closes the airtight door and walks to her.

“You clearly need that and more,” she gestures at his face, his arms, torso, everything covered in gashes and blood. “Three years of treating the most wound-prone Psychopomp of the Order, and yet the extent of them somehow always shocks me. A feat, truly,” she marvels, “I do wonder if you even try to avoid them.” She then motions to a nearby reclined seat of leather and metal with a basin of water, bundle of towels, and dark metal box adjacent. Sit, she says without a word.

He does so, “I would be ash upon the Stygian if I did not.”

Cool air crashes upon his clammy, pale feet as the Kore removes his distressed leather boots and wool socks, “It is a comfort to know you are at least fighting death.” She then pulls his shirt and vest off, revealing the scarred muscle and darkening vascularity webbed throughout his skin. “And achieving victory by increasingly thinner margins,” she sighs as her fingers trace the dark lines and wounds to his lacerated arm.

“But victory nonetheless.”

“Many would argue a pyrrhic victory is not a victory,” his skin savors her touch as she makes way to the grotesquely patched hole in his abdomen. Deep purple and sickly yellow sets in the skin still around it.

Ewain grimaces from the pain, sharp and sudden.

“Did that hurt?”

“Not at all,” he dismisses.

“Your covenant partner’s technique with your wounds is still atrocious,” she remarks at the end of her inspection and moves to remove his trousers and undergarment, “it is sadly clear he does not know what he is doing.”

“No improvements or redeeming qualities at all?” He asks as stoically as he can.

Flinging his trousers to the side, the young maiden then gently pushes his naked body to lie down in the seat, “I suppose an improvement from your last partner, but is an improvement from incapability truly redeeming?” She grabs a towel, soaks it in the basin, and begins wiping his body. “He may be more a threat to your life than your trauma sites.”

Ewain studies her face, the elegant thin, curved nose, the lofty eyes beneath decorous arches, comely jawline that compliments her demeanor well, “What…constructive criticism would you have me give him?”

As she cleans him with the methodical and tender movements of much practice, she peers at his eyes and speaks wryly, “Will he listen, do you know? Or will he be too…prideful?”

“May depend on how the lady words it.”

With a smile, the lady looks down at his darkening arm and traces a seeping wound with the tip of her finger, “When he is applying the medical adhesive, he is not putting the applicator tip into the wound. It is apparent he applies it externally, drops it in instead of inserting it. The adhesive does not set deep enough, gets flushed with blood, and seeps out like so before it can properly sanitize let alone seal. It will hurt more, substantially more, but he must place the applicator directly into the wound, then apply. It will seal properly, and consequently heal properly. My guess is that your partner does not do this to spare you further pain during your rotations.”

Ewain does not answer immediately, looks at the faux stars, “No, no CP would do that. Our tenets forbid it.”

She squeezes his upper arm, “Whether it is mercy or ineptitude, I do hope he will take my words to heart.

“Your word can be hard to deny.”

Tighter she squeezes, her thumb rubbing back and forth, “You deny me all the time.”

“Only when you ask me to do something dishonorable.”

A sweet chuckle shows her pearlescent teeth, “Oh, dishonorable is it? To bid you enter before me?”

Ewain’s face reflects her expression, “To cut before a maiden, aye. You ought to know better by now, madame.”

“A thing we have in common, it seems, not knowing what we ought to. Will I ever win that battle?”

“The day you are no longer a lady. Ichorians be merciful, that never happens, and you have not been deceiving me this whole time. I mean,” he looks down at himself, “there is no mistaking what I am.”

Another sweet chuckle plays its lovely chord, “And the day you walk before me is when I know your wounds have gotten to you, and Ewain Gregor is no longer himself.”

Beholding her breathtaking face, he can see a reticence beneath the composure. There was more she wished to say, something she wished to ask, but he knew she would not. And he would not ask of it, not yet.

Tighter she squeezes his arm while her other hand grabs his fingers, “I will do my part to ensure that never happens. Shall we pray together, Psychopompos?” The breath in her every word bore the beat of her heart, fervent, alive, sincere.

He nods, “Yes.”

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, “Mighty Ichorians, Asclepius the Healer, in this moment grant this man solace. Use me as an instrument to heal him so he may guide many more lost ones to your isles Beyond. Please give him life through this rotation and the many that will follow.” Silence follows until she opens her eyes, “Rest. We will get you in that spring soon enough.”

Finally releasing her grasp of him, the Kore opens the nearby metal box. Various tools are organized inside next to coiled rubber tubing attached to suspended, fluid-filled glass vials and needles of numerous gauges.

It takes little time for Ewain to drift to sleep once she inserts a needled tube into the disk in his arm. In this moment she admires him, the countless scars from his calves to his face that multiply with every rotation. She knew each one, knew he felt them all, felt them constantly and without reprieve.

She squeezes his hand one last time. Take a deep breath, the Kore instructs herself as she fastens her clothes tight and covers her face and hands.

A long, thin scar visible only to those who search for it bands Ewain’s upper left arm where it meets his shoulder. No jagged crudeness of asymmetry taints its ring. Hands steadied with years of repetition and experience, she guides the scalpel to the scar line and cuts along it, the dermis tensile and thin.

Once the slow-bleeding incision completes itself around the joint, she peels back the skin of his arm, little by little, until an organic-covered metal component is revealed. Trading the scalpel for a needle no thicker than a thumbnail with its own tube attached, she guides it toward a port upon the component. The force required to fully insert it to the approving click always unsettles her, and she had to tame the worry of breaking the needle or, gods forbid, the bone beneath.

Click.

Suddenly the resistance vanishes, blood ceases to pool. Timid clicks and grinds chant in mechanical tongues, separating Ewain’s arm further and further from his body. With the endorsement of lingering quiet, she carefully disconnects his arm from the protruding metal link.

Countless hours she has spent tending his prosthetic alone, and she harbors no doubt it will be many more now. Though what she examines appears worse than she had seen it in some time, it is simply harsher degrees of the same wounds. Whatever medical adhesive somehow remains is dissolved with heat and chemical to ensure visual integrity of each wound. Some peel and show already the tar-black cysts rooted within them. Some are partially dissolved or stunted in growth while others form perfect masses with slick tendrils. All must be burnt out, every wound thoroughly cleaned.

Taking a seat at a nearby table, she begins her work. The mechanical integrity that binds skin, muscle, and tissue must be evaluated and validated. After the cleansing, where the pungent stench of incinerating flesh dominates the air, she inspects the depths of each gash to see if any cut deep to the metal bone. Not even the smallest cut does the Kore dare miss. She takes her time, arranges a methodical and sensible pattern from this lacerated flesh canvas. Those that reach bone, she parts the flesh just enough to repair any damage done before sealing it.

Once satisfied with the arm, she moves to his body, where the punctures in his leg and crudely patched hole in his abdomen await. With a metal rod tipped by a fine red point, she taps along the patch, gradually dissolving it from its paper mache texture to a viscous paste. Every little bit must come out and while the Psychopomp’s modified physiology and applied pharma composition stymies the bleeding, she moves quickly.

Meticulously washing her hands, she plunges one into the abdominal hole, pushing through taut, soft, slick muscle and tissue, feeling around for any cysts. They feel as rock, ridged and impermeable, and cold as though plucked fresh from winter waters. Like the weeds in the ghost grass, she expertly grasps each cyst and pulls its tendrils free before extracting it from Ewain’s body. When she finishes, the bucket in which she threw them all nearly overflows with gagging, black masses.

Patched, sewn, and cleaned. The young maiden gives what hours she can for Ewain’s body to heal, cleaning herself and the area around them, yet the time is limited. Dark vascular webs in his body leave famished opportunity for respite.

From the slot in his head, she removes Art’s Ashwood card. Nearby is a pedestal atop which is a round, obsidian gemstone and as she inserts the card into its bevel, she watches as specks of light swirl like the exhalation of fire.

“Hey,” she comes along Ewain’s side and nudges him with tenderness, as if she truly did not want to wake him, “Hey, how are you feeling?”

Ewain’s eyes open heavy, and he blinks many times in a struggle for consciousness, “Tremendous,” he tries to grin, “how are you?”

Her smile compensates for his, “Better now,” but a sigh unfastens her cheeks, “You should know that your arm is still detached. I know you detest being awake when it is,” she says quickly, seeing the sudden gravity in his face, “but you truly endured much. It, you, still need time to properly recover before I feel comfortable reattaching it to you.” Six hours passed since he underwent her care. She truly could delay no longer, “We must cleanse your blood, Psychopompos, its anathema concentration is…profound.” And so, she pulls her warm hands from his chest and steps back. She offers no help for him to rise…knows Ewain did not like it when in his current…state.

Ewain stares above. The stars, they look so real. They glitter and sparkle, seem so far yet just within reach if only he could reach up and grab them. He pushes himself up yet wobbles and slips. Damn it. Again, he tries, compensating with his core to plant his feet.

She smiles at him.

Ewain smiles back and tries to walk as if nothing is different, ignoring the imbalance in his steps, the absence of a swinging arm that became stranger again after so many years.

Steam billows from the spring baths, slowing the descent of the cherry blossoms. Sight alone induces serenity, grasping any malignant frustration and dispersing it to infinitesimal obscurity. Jadovan long ago found these springs and showed them to his brothers and sisters to quell any troubles, and so no mortal distress can endure even the mimicry of such perfect sanctity.

Ewain approaches the right spring. Submergence into it feels as ice to hot water, melting on contact, evolving into another state of matter that loses itself to a greater whole. Once his shoulders dip beneath and only his head remains above the surface, Ewain cradles himself on the contoured platform.

She lowers to her knees behind him and from a hollow in base of the tree pulls two thick vine-like cords, both with flattened, card-shaped prongs at their ends. Gently, the maiden inserts one of the cards into the right slot in Ewain’s head. Then she stands and shyly sheds her robes, keeping out of his sight and clicking the last cord into the left slot in her head.

In the left spring, he hears the surface stir as the Kore enters. His eyes keep up, peripherals close, and he soaks in the vaporous quiet until the Kore’s breath vacates her body in a profound exhale.

Bodily encasement feels like it dissolves. Their senses evaporate, raptured by the steam to leave them more and more incongruent with fading reality.

Clouds of faint black emanate from Ewain’s body into the water like ink. Denser and richer they become until only an obscure outline of his body can be seen through the water’s surface. The darker the water becomes, the lighter the dark of the dome grows.

Stars brighten and seemingly descend from the ether to gather in clusters and constellations mere feet above the grass. Between many, hazy pathways of celestial dust form.

The young maiden can feel each as though her essence that saturates the air embeds into them all. Her consciousness is a vessel amongst this cosmic map, and each path and point contain a journey recorded in time. She need only give the direction and destination.

“Recall,” she utters in a voice that permeates time and space, “an end for all.”

And Ewain answers, his own voice singular and temperate, “A rush before the light, a dark sea to cross. Scenes of past play as present. A burst of light in the span of a breath. Shivering. Cold. Alone. Alone.”

“Six souls. Saved. Severed. Delivered. Six souls.”

“Six souls,” Ewain repeats.

“Delivered.”

“Delivered.”

“Mother to many. Loved by all. Calm and nurturing. Anchored in water. Tell her family.” The Kore’s words speak without echo or drag, whipping with tension, seeking a reciprocal response to her emotional summons.

“Delivered,” Ewain answers, a warmth capped like bubbles beneath a film of ice.

“Struggling commoner. Aspiring bar owner. Shy and meek. Heart stilled by lead. Only strife, never joy.” Every word rides her heart.

“Delivered.”

“Pharma addict. In need of more. No price too steep. Throat crushed beneath feet. Meaningless, meaningless.”

“Delivered.”

“Estranged father. Incapable of love. Soothed by drink. Head hammered open. What went wrong.”

“Delivered.”

“Desperate teen. Eager to please. No self-worth. Charred in flame. Never good enough.”

“Delivered.”

“Worshipper of dreams. Ever in pursuit. Taunted by the world. Savaged and tortured. Why must things end.” A minute pulse radiates within a cluster.

And a minute pause precedes Ewain’s answer, “Delivered.”

The grass around them rustles, silhouettes chase each other in panting breaths.

“Name?” She asks gently, an airlessness budding within her.

“Freya-,” He gasps.

“Name?” She asks again, air fleeting.

“Norma Mortenson.”

“Connection?” Lungs shrivel.

“Dead made incarnate. Past as present. Dreams and innocence.”

“A feeling? Heart to heart?”

“An echo long-seeded.”

“A killer? A price to pay?”

“A price to pay,” he utters, pained. Shadow-cast specters stand around them, the candles at the springs’ edge snap and twirl.

She focuses on a pathway whose auroral lights twist like a double helix collapsing on itself. Her duty obliged her to douse these lights that form when a Psychopomp encounters a case that manifests a core memory in some way. If she did not, then the strands would dance with each other to inimitable entanglement and leave a Psychopomp’s memory overlayed or attached to another.

Yet as her essence nears this luminary connection, guilt rumbles like a deeply buried earthquake, one which her thoughts register. The case…the victim…this Norma will not be forgotten she tells herself, merely exiled from this constellation and cast to drift like an indistinct star, the one people’s eyes glaze quickly over as they absorb a night sky. Still there, just…trivial. I will remember, the maiden reminds herself.

When she enters the path, she sees it all, the journey of each strand, and with every detail streaming from Ewain to her, the light fades until the outlier star now drifts away with her tender push. Her heart conflagrates, fissuring in each ventricle and boiling her eyes to evoke tears. Every beat is woeful combustion, firing on all oil-less cylinders to accelerate toward a cliff’s edge.

“Six souls,” the maiden coughs out. The deed is done.

“Six souls,” Ewain repeats, the burden in his voice abolished.

“Saved. Severed. Delivered.”

He recites her words.

“Recall. Past as present.”

“Past as present.”

“Autumn night,” she begins, urgency plucking her calm voice like a chord, “Hints of winter in the air. Warmth of a hearth. A feasting hall aglow in gold. Filled with many, familiar and loved.”

“Fragrance of fresh food,” Ewain takes over, as particular pathways between paths now race with light, “calm of happy chatter. Simplicity of youth.”

“Happiness. Peace. Shelter and safety.”

“Veritas.” Ewain concurs. Truth.

Suddenly the air lightens, no longer the texture of a vinegar-soaked sponge scrubbing her airway. Candle lights steady to attention and the spectral spectators diminish.

“Mountain snows. Melts of spring,” now her effort concentrated on consciousness, control. A little more. “shared stories in the night.”

“Shared beneath a wool blanket. Moonlight through the glass.”

“Not a worry in this world. Free. Joyous.”

“Veritas.”

The stars all kindle with comforting summer light that turns all the pathways into burnished bridges.

“You have fulfilled your duty, Psychopompos. Remember who you are.” Constellations become asymmetric shapes of a hundred edges, and her presence in them is emancipated. She falls back into her body with a deep inhale. Body made whole now, alive, so alive!

Wiping the tears still upon her cheeks, the maiden sits up in her still clear water and looks at Ewain, still afloat in space. “You should not have done that case, Ewain…,” she sighs. She wants to reach over the grassy partition and take his hand yet keeps hers by her side. “I am so sorry.”

With the steam that still radiates from his spring, the black of the water dwindles. Masquerading as smoke, the vaporous plumes soar above, spiriting the water away with it and leaving Ewain sprawled naked in a petal covered basin.

When consciousness returned to Ewain, he was wrapped in fresh white robes and his body once again whole. Grass tickles his cheeks, and this bizarre cleanliness left his skin feeling so…unsullied. The dreary density which made his body so foreign before is absent now. Bringing his left hand before his face, Ewain taps his fingers to his thumb in accelerating sequence.

“It always feels strange to see you wake after eight hours of sleep and know you still need so much more.” The young maiden muses from an arm’s length away, seated in the grass, clutching her knees. “Do you feel that way?”

Propping himself up, Ewain mirrors her posture, “I feel much better than before. Renewed, thanks to you and rested enough for now.” A burning tear swells in his left shoulder, and he tenderly massages it.

“I applied Regen to your arm. It should restore full functionality promptly. More rest, though, is the best way to ensure your body heals. If you are going to continue taking damage like this,” which they both know he will, “then please make sure your body is in its best state to tolerate it. Psychopompos or not, there is still only so much you can sustain. Every single wound you take from those…demons, cut to gash, imbues anathema. The more rested you are, the more effectively your body and the pharmas will be at keeping you…you.” Her seaborne eyes pursue the words to him.

“I will take care of myself. During this off rotation, I intend to train. My skillset needs improvement.”

“I suppose I shall see the truth of it in a week,” she subtly laments. They both knew what he meant. Argue as she may, massage his heart with hers, Ewain ultimately did what he wanted on rotations.

“Speaking of rest,” Ewain can see and hear it on her. The squint of the eyes, blurred edges of her words show to him no matter how well she hid them, “You need to follow your own prescription.” With a muffled grunt, Ewain rises and offers his hand, “Let me delay you no further.”

A sweet delicacy tempers her touch, conditioned so thoroughly to position her hand upon his like that of a proper lady. Straight wrist, palm perpendicular to the fingers, and when he pulls her up, her other hand glides across her mantle with such fluid grace to ensure no indecency, “A week,” she repeats as they wander to the door, “I hope to see you again.”

“I hope so, too,” He looks down then back up at her with a small smile, “Thank you, as always, Vira.”